Friday, September 30, 2011

Water Vapour is in Excess of Saturation in the Atmosphere of Mars, reveals the results from the SPICAM spectrometer on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft.
It measured the altitudinal profile of water vapour in the martian atmosphere.....

Here is the published paper:
"Evidence of Water Vapor in Excess of Saturation in the Atmosphere of Mars", by L. Maltagliati, F. Montmessin, A. Fedorova, O. Korablev, F. Forget, and J.-L. Bertaux, published in the 30 September 2011 issue of Science.http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6051/1868.abstract

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Recently, a group of physicists have been working to measure the neutrinos generated from a particle accelerator at CERN. This group discovered neutrinos arriving faster than would have been expected and they appear to be traveling faster than the speed of light itself, but they draw no definitive conclusions.

CNGS – CERN neutrinos to Gran Sasso

The CNGS project sends muon neutrinos from CERN to the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS), 732 km away in Italy. A proton beam from the Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN is directed onto a graphite target

Friday, September 23, 2011

Photographed by the Expedition 28 crew aboard the
International Space Station, this image shows the moon, the Earth's
only natural satellite, at center with the limb of Earth near the
bottom transitioning into the orange-colored troposphere, the lowest
and most dense portion of the Earth's atmosphere. The troposphere
ends abruptly at the tropopause, which appears in the image as the
sharp boundary between the orange- and blue-colored atmosphere. The
silvery-blue noctilucent clouds extend far above the Earth's
troposphere.

Monday, September 19, 2011

How about taking part in World Space Week Competitions....?
Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre VSSC, the lead centre of ISRO coordinates World Space Week activities in Kerala to motivate students and teachers.

Many competitions for School children......
Mars Habitat design competition for College Students...!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Exploration is
the inquisite nature of human mind, which has historically led to the
discovery of new continents and development of new habitats. Looking
back, without these discoveries and advances, living on Earth would
have been completely different from what we see today. Rapid
developments in human race, limitations in resources on Earth, and
the potential threat from weapons of mass destruction necessitates
that we will have to boldly go far beyond the Earth's boundaries if
the human race has to continue for thousands of years forward. More
importantly, space explorations hold the key to unravel the secrets
behind the origin and evolution of life and environment surrounding
us. These drive the quest for space exploration and colonization.

Where else can
earthlings colonize?

Being
close by and relatively easy to reach, our natural satellite 'Moon'
comes as the first choice. Humans have already landed on it and
conducted many surveys and studies based on remote sensing and insitu
sampling. The discovery of the presence of water in the lunar surface
and its extremely thin atmosphere by payloads in India's
Chandrayaan-1 has further boosted the renewed interest in moon. Few
unmanned lunar orbital missions are currently exploring the Moon
(e.g., NASA's GRAIL) and several others are in the pipeline (e.g.,
ISRO's Chandrayaan-2, NASA's LADEE and ARTEMIS, JAXA's SELENE, ESA's
Lunar Lander). In fact, moon can serve as an intermediate base for
explorations beyond.

Mars
is the second choice. Explorations startaed in the 1960s are still
continuing. Studies revealed that there is significant quantity of
water in the form of ice in the Martian poles. A colony on Mars could
use this as a source of oxygen. In contrast, Mercury and Venus are
too hot, while Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants with no solid
surface and hence may not be suitable for colonization.

See this magnificent image taken from the International Space Station few days back.....
See the flood lit border line between India and Pak.
U can also see the air glow (greenish) occuring in the ionosphere....
click on the image to zoom.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

"Eyes on the Solar System" is a 3-D environment full of real NASA mission data. Explore the cosmos from your computer. Hop on an asteroid. Fly with NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft. See the entire solar system moving in real time. It's up to you. You control space and time.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Scientists made a breakthrough! In their paper published in Nature Communications, they describe a method whereby a laser is used to create nitric acid particles in the air to which moisture will gravitate forming droplets.
Thereby triggering the formation of Rain.